Bank Robber Hires Accomplices on Craigslist

I have heard some wild stories about Craigslist, for example the one that surfaced last year of a man who was looking to get back at his arch rival. He knew his nemesis usually left his house unlocked and decided to post a contents sale on Craigslist telling everyone the guy was getting rid of everything he owned for free, people just had to show up at his house and take what they wanted. The unlucky sod arrived at his house to find people leaving his front door with everything, including the kitchen sink.

This new one however takes the cake. A guy was attracted by a road work job posted on craigslist. He was told to meet outside a bank and was told to wear specific clothing (look like a road worker). He showed up and found a number of other guys all wearing the same clothing, but no road work to be done. Turns out that someone robbed the bank wearing the same clothes and used these suckers as a diversion. Pretty stupid if you ask me, but he seems to have gotten away with it … for now. Dont believe me? Check out the news story here.

The Energy “Non-Crisis”

Last week, I attended a presentation by Pierre-Olivier Pineau, a professor at HEC Montreal who specializes in energy policy. He delivered a presentation entitled “The Energy Non-Crisis.” His basic thesis is that the current state of global energy consumption does not meet the definition of a crisis. He asserts that at our current rates of consumption we could survive for at least a century, and thereby there is no immediate need to curb usage of non-renewables.

Obviously, and I believe intentionally, this perspective excludes a number of critical arguments, not the least of which being rising rates of demand across the developed and undeveloped world and the environmental impacts of our energy habits. He does this to establish a bookend perspective. One (untenable) position is that we maintain the status quo. The other (unlikely) position is that the world wakes up tomorrow with the political and economic will to dramatically and materially change the way energy is produced and consumed.

The net effect this has is to open up the middle ground, and allow the rest of us to debate exactly what the appropriate actions to take are. For our generation, this question is particularly poignant. 100 years seems like a long way off, but when we turn 65, this will become an immediate concern.

For the most part, we say all the right things. We research new technologies, we talk about reducing our carbon footprints, and we chide our parents about the gas-guzzling minivans they drove carpool in when we were young. But what can we do to have an impact beyond our small spheres of influence? How do we expand our scopes to the communities around us?

I believe that the way to affect change is by engaging actively in the political process, working with our elected representatives to develop an implement meaningful change. Ultimately, we will be in a position to become those elected representitives, and will hopefull be campaigning to a more educated and concerned population. I suspect, however, that many of my peers disagree with this, and feel that politics is an old man’s game with no real impact. So what does everyone out there think? How can generation Y, on the cusp of self-sufficiency, drive our respective communities to take action while energy is still a “non-crisis”?

How to Get Through Life 101 to 448 (If only it exsisted…)

I came across this article on lifehack.org, “8 Essential Skills They Didn’t Teach you in School” and I feel that readers and contributors to this blog will be able to add valuable skills of their own they think should be on the list or further links to the 8 topics… but that is because I assume everyone reading this blog is smarter than the average bear 🙂

1. How to make people like you and network
2. How to speed read (spreednews.com) and the power of audio books
3. How to set goals and manage time
4. How to read a financial statement
5. How to negotiate, read contracts and not get taken advantage of
6. How to save and invest
7. How to be sucessful in life
8. How to spread an idea and basic marketing

The Social Surge: Keeping up with Web 2.0 is a job on its own.

Twitter, Facebook, del.icio.us, LinkedIn, MySpace, Blogs, NewsCloud, elgg, Sharepoint, PeopleAggregator, and on and on. What do these social sites have in common, other than the fashionable Web 2.0-ish way of taking away the space between words? They increase confusion for small business owners who are looking to get a respectable online presence and manage their team.

It is often asked what the value is in creating and maintaining a social profile on sites such as Facebook or MySpace, or why purchasing monthly packages for platforms like PeopleAggregator or Central desktop can benefit a small business. Well, the answer is easy especially for low fee sites. These online collaboration tools allow users the capacity to create and maintain content across a range of websites and services – and also use them as their central service to manage all that content while connecting with others. Central Desktop, for example, offers simple to use online collaboration tools for business teams and there is no technical knowledge or programming experience required.

If you are looking into a fee based online collaboration, there are four things to consider before signing up:

1. How well you can use a dashboard to manage projects
2. How well you can host online visual or audio conferences
3. How the service will make your sharing and revising of documents that much easier
4. How quickly your team can adopt, adapt, and maintain their updates and shared calendars.

If you are looking into creating a presence with social networking and viral marketing through free online sources like Facebook, you must consider the following:

1. How much time it will take to maintain your social site
2. How to control content and spammers
3. How to promote your business/service effectively so not to spam others
4. How you can create a credible existence while increasing your referral network, i.e. creating and sustaining a reputable brand
5. What groups to join and how you will use them to your benefit.

Be wise and define your parameters. What platform is your friend? And which is your enemy? Wal-Mart’s exploitation of Facebook is not a model to follow. Their use of Facebook as a sales gimmick angered college students across the U.S. Before setting up a social site or purchasing a monthly package, create a strategy and determine your goals. There is nothing worse than spammers writing hate messages on your wall for all to read. And remember, keeping up with social networks is a job on its own. If you don’t have the time, then don’t do it or hire someone else to do it for you.